15 Americans Edited by Dorothy C

15 Americans Edited by Dorothy C. Miller, with statements by the artists and others

Author Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.)

Date 1952

Publisher The Museum of Modern Art: Distributed by Simon & Schuster

Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3294

The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists.

5 x AMERICANS LIBRARY Museumof ModernArt ARCHIVE KEASERETURN TOTHE OFFICE OF MONROE WHEELER

5 ! AMERICANS

. BAZIOTES CORBETT DICKINSON FERBER GLASCO PAGES 12-14 6-7 42-44 10-1 1 33-35

KATZMAN KIESLER KRIESBERG LIPPOLD POLLOCK 38-39 8-9 36-37 7-29 2 15-17

ROSE ROTHKO STILL TOMLIN WILFRED 40-41 18-20 21-23 24-26 30-32 EDITED BY DOROTHY C. MILLER

WITH STATEMENTS BY THE ARTISTS AND OTHERS

5 J AMERICANS

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

On behalf of the Trustees of the Museum of Modern Lily van Ameringen. I also wish to thank Witten- Art, I wish to express my gratitude to the artists for born, Schultz, Inc. for permission to quote the help in assembling their work for this exhibition statement by William Baziotes published in Possi and for contributing statements for the catalog; to bilities 1 (Problems of Contemporary Art, No. 4), the collectors, museums and dealers whose gener winter 1947-48; Ruth and John Stephan for per osity in lending has made the exhibition possible mission to quote two statements by Mark Rothko and whose names appear on page 45. Grateful published in The Tiger's Eye, December 1947, and acknowledgment is made to Mr. Alfonso Ossorio October 1949; the American Society for Aesthetics and to Mr. Edward W. Root for their statements and Dr. Thomas Munro for permission to quote on Pollock and Tomlin; to Mr. Charles C. Cun from articles by Thomas Wilfred published in 1'he ningham, Mr. Charles Egan, Mr. Henry Elkan, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, June 1947 and Dr. Max Gruenewald, Mr. Robert Beverly Hale, December 1948; Harper's Bazaar for the photograph Mr. Donald W. Laging, Mr. Frederick B. Robin of Frederick Kiesler's sculpture. son, Mr. Ben Rose, Mr. William B. H. Sawyer, DOROTHY C. MILLER Mr. Clay Spohn, Mr. Joseph S. Trovato and Miss Director of the Exhibition

TRUSTEES OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

JOHN HAY WHITNEY, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD; S. PALEY, MRS. E. B. PARKINSON, MRS. CHARLES S. HENRY ALLEN MOE, 1ST VICE-CHAIRMAN; PHILIP L. PAYSON, ANDREW CARNDUFF RITCHIE, DAVID ROCKE GOODWIN, 2ND VICE-CHAIRMAN; NELSON A. ROCKE FELLER, BEARDSLEY RUML, JOHN L. SENIOR, JR., FELLER, president; mrs. david m. levy, ist vice- JAMES THRALL SOBY, EDWARD M. M. WARBURG, president; ALFRED H. BARR, JR., MRS. ROBERT WOODS MONROE WHEELER BLISS, WILLIAM A. M. BURDEN, STEPHEN C. CLARK, RENE D'HARNONCOURT, MRS. EDSEL B. FORD, A. HONORARY TRUSTEES CONGER GOODYEAR, MRS. SIMON GUGGENHEIM, FREDERIC CLAY BARTLETT, MRS. W. MURRAY CRANE, WALLACE K. HARRISON, JAMES W. HUSTED, MRS. DUNCAN PHILLIPS, PAUL J. SACHS, MRS. JOHN S. ALBERT D. LASKER, MRS. HENRY R. LUCE, RANALD H. SHEPPARD MACDONALD, MRS. G. MACCULLOCH MILLER, WILLIAM

Fifteen Americans is one of a series of exhibitions initiated by the Museum of Modern Art in 1929, the year of its founding. Like the others in the series this exhibition follows a pattern devised at that time: to present the work of a limited number of artists, devoting considerable space, in some instances a whole gallery, to the work of each one. In contrast with the cross-sections of contemporary American art held annually by many museums in which a large number of artists are represented by one work each, this pattern has been found to give a broader and more effective view of individual achievement. The series began in 1929 with Paintings by Nineteen Living Americans and continued in 1930 with Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans. After a num ber of more general American exhibitions held during the 1930s, the Museum presented Americans 1942, which showed eighteen artists then working outside New York. American Realists and Magic Realists, 1943, was the only exhibition of the series devoted to a specific kind of painting; while Fourteen Americans, 1946, reviewed the work of artists of diverse styles, as had the earlier shows. Fifteen Americans, 1952, again brings together a group of distinguished artists of marked individuality and widely differing aims. Their achievement may indicate trends in our art today, but to discover and illustrate such trends was not the primary intention behind the exhibition. The purpose was rather to give each artist an opportunity to speak to the Museum's public, in clear and individual terms, through a strong presentation of his work. American art is rich in diversity. It is rich too in the mastery of techniques, a mastery which frees the artist for his main effort, the creation of form and symbol to express the quality and dimension of his experience. In the work of certain artists in Fifteen Americans—Dickinson, Rose, Katzman —experience and its expression are related to the world the artist sees about him. Others — Baziotes, Kiesler, Ferber, and Pollock in some of his latest pictures —even when dealing primarily with abstract forms, evoke vivid associations with the objective world. The work of Glasco and of Kriesberg seems to fall between these two groups. Rothko, Still, much of Pollock, Tomlin, Corbett, Lippold and Wilfred fall within the category usually called abstract, which, as many competent observers have remarked, is the dominant trend in mid- century American painting. Classification of this kind is apt to be inaccurate. If it does not mislead the public it usually annoys the artist, particularly since so many of its terms can scarcely be defined. To this show of the work of fifteen painters and sculptors, separately exhibited, the artists' own statements, thoughtful, evocative, poetic, will prove the best introduction. D. C. M.

5 EDWARD CORBETT

opposite: Edward Corbett: Number u. 1951. Chalk, 34^8 x 22 . La Galeria Escondida, Taos, New Mexico

left: Edward Corbett: Number 13. 195 1. Chalk and casein, 27 x 14". La Galeria Escondida, Taos, New Mexico

Born Chicago, 1919. Son of Army officer; as a child, lived in Washington, D.C.; at Army posts in San Antonio and Laredo, Texas; the Philippines; Ohio; Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Went to high school at Tombstone, Arizona, and Richmond, California. Studied at California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, 1938-40. U.S. Army, 1941 ; Merchant Marine, 1942-44. In New York, 1944-46. To San Francisco, 1946. Taught at San Francisco State College, 1947, California School of Fine Arts, 1947- 51, and University of California, 1950. Returned to the Southwest, 1951; now lives in Taos, New Mexico. In group exhibitions: San Francisco mu seums. from 1947; American Abstract Artists, New York, 1947; Art Institute of Chicago, 1947; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, 1950. magm

mm.

I intend my work as poetry. EDWARD CORBETT

7 CORBETT FREDERICK KIESLER

Note on Correalism: consciousness would manifest itself in every type of life-activity and so, naturally, in painting, sculpting, My sculpture is a practical sculpture. It is both to building. be lived with and within. I find my paintings consisting of many paintings, Sculpture should be touched not by the eye alone. smaller and larger units, separated from each other It should be enjoyed not only esthetically but through intervals of varying dimensions, yet be physically as well. This is a sculpture for relaxation. longing together as one cluster, one nova, one galaxy. My sculptures I also see as consisting of It has always been difficult for me to separate arti divergent chunks of matter, held together yet apart, facts from facts. Sculpture, painting, architecture appearing like galactic structures, * each part lead should not be used as wedges to split our experience ing a life of coexistence, of correality with the of art and life; they are here to link, to correlate, to others. Yet this correlation, whether close or far bind dream and reality. To separate sculpture and apart, does not necessarily depend on physical links. painting from the flow of our daily environment is As in wireless electricity, there is correlation with to put them on pedestals, to shut them up in frames, out connection. These "endless" paintings and thus destroying their integrative potentialities and sculptures lead a life of inner cohesion. Between arresting their continuity with our total mode of these corporeal units there lie the various empty life. fields of tension that hold the parts together like planets in a void. The debacle of art as a necessity today is caused by its separation from daily living, its isolation. During FREDERICK KIESLER the past fifty years it has exhibited the exciting flare-up of a flame before extinction. The new flame *It was some time ago that I first worked on the will be kindled by the reawakening of our primor structural principle of "tensions in free space" and dial awareness of the interrelatedness of man and wrote about it in the review De Stijl, Paris, 1925. nature, by a new consciousness of belonging- The term correalism in its relation to nuclear con together, of coexistence in spite of apartness in cepts appeared first in my paper on the Laboratory space-time, of interdependence beyond such eco for Design Correlation at Columbia University in nomic and social factors as now separate us. Such a the Architectural Record, New York, 1939.

Born Vienna, 1896. Studied architecture at Insti design, Juilliard School of Music, since 1934; direc tute of Technology and Academy of Fine Arts, tor of Laboratory for Design Correlation, School of Vienna. Worked with Adolf Loos, 1910. Stage Architecture, Columbia University, 1936-43. De setting for R. U. R., Berlin, 1923; The Emperor signed Art of This Century gallery, 1942. To Paris, Jones, 1923, first "space-stage." Member of de Stijl 1947, to design "Hall of Superstition" at Galerie group, 1923. Chief architect, International Theatre Maeght in collaboration with Duchamp, Miro, and Music Festival, Vienna, 1924; fully developed Ernst, Tanguy and others. First sculpture, Totem of "space-theatre." Architect, Austrian section ("City Religions, made at this time. First version of Galaxy, in Space"), International Exposition of Decorative New York, 1947-48, made for production of Mil- Arts, Paris, 1925. To New York, 1926. Exhibited haud's Le Pauvre Matelot , Juilliard School of Music; "space-house," New York, 1933. Director of scenic present version, 1951. Lives in New York. opposite: Frederick Kiesler: Galaxy. 1947-48, 195 1. Construction in wood, 12' high. Collection Nelson A. Rockefeller. Photograph Ben Rose

HERBERT FERBER

Contemporary sculpture, to my mind, achieves a his experience, so exactly constructed that there can good deal of its excitement from the way it extends be no doubt about his idea, although there may be in space. Its principal sign is that of extension, and several layers of meaning. often it is not extension from a central mass but rather extension in and about the space in such a One of the things I became involved in, as I pro way that space becomes part of the sculpture. The ceeded with the Synagogue commission, in the at space is not displaced by the work as water is when tempt to visualize the piece on the building, was the a ship is launched. The sculpture moves in space, it question of intimacy. Some years ago, in Italy, I pierces space and holds it in tension. However, this had seen several sculptures at close range which had is but the sign by which the image of the artist's been brought down from their sites high up on vision can be recognized. The way in which he buildings. I had seen these works originally in situ, materializes it is impossible to foretell but it is com and the confrontation with them, eye to eye, was pletely under his control. overwhelming. There was a depth of form in which one could almost wander, and a sense of mass and If the sculptor succeeds in forcing on the material intimacy of which there was only an indication a transmutation into plastic idea, the spectator will when they were in place. I think that in much mod not be misled. However, when materials themselves ern work this sense of intimate involvement with the are held in reverence and when new techniques are sculpture is very important, and the loss of it, if mistaken for new plastic ideas, art goes out the door. sculpture should go on buildings, may be a great The artist is concerned with fusing his personal and one. private vision with form, to make a metaphor for HERBERT FERBER

Born New York, 1906. Studied at City College of New York; Beaux-Arts Institute of Design; Tiffany Foundation fellowship. One-man shows: Midtown Gallery, 1937, 1943; Betty Parsons Gallery, 1947, 1950. In collections of Grand Rapids Art Gallery; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art. Lives in New York.

opposite: Herbert Ferber: ". . . . and the bush was not consumed: 1951. Commissioned by the Congregation B'nai Israel for the fagade of the Synagogue in Millburn, New Jersey. Made of soldered copper, brass, lead and tin; i2'8" high, 7'io" wide. Photographs Henry Elkan

WILLIAM BAZIOTES

1 cannot evolve any concrete theory about paint gestion, I begin to paint intuitively. The suggestion ing. What happens on the canvas is unpredictable then becomes a phantom that must be caught and and surprising to me. But I am able to speak of cer made real. As I work, or when the painting is tain things that have occurred up to now in the finished, the subject reveals itself. course of my painting. As for the subject matter in my painting, when I Today it's possible to paint one canvas with the am observing something that may be the theme for calmness of an ancient Greek, and the next with the a painting, it is very often an incidental thing in the anxiety of a van Gogh. Either of these emotions, background, elusive and unclear, that really stirred and any in between, is valid to me. me, rather than the thing before me. There is no particular system I follow when I be I work on many canvases at once. In the morning gin a painting. Each painting has its own way of I line them up against the wall of my studio. Some evolving. One may start with a few color areas on speak; some do not. They are my mirrors. They the canvas; another with a myriad of lines; and per tell me what I am like at the moment. haps another with a profusion of colors. Each be ginning suggests something. Once I sense the sug WILLIAM BAZIOTES

12 opposite: William Baziotes: Night Mirror. 1947. Oil on canvas, 48 x 60". Collection Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III

right: William Baziotes: Cat. 1950. Oil on canvas, 38^ x 22". Collection Joseph R. Shapiro

below: William Baziotes: Toy World. 1951. Oil on canvas, 50 x 60". Collec tion Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden

BAZIOTES 13 William Baziotes: Jungle. 195 1. Oil on canvas. 48 x 60". Collection Nelson A. Rockefeller

Born Pittsburgh, 1912. Grew up in Reading, Penn County Museum; Metropolitan Museum of Art; sylvania. To New York, 1933; studied at National Museum of Modern Art; Newark Museum; Tel Academy of Design, 1933-36. On WPA Federal Art Aviv Museum, Israel; University of Illinois; Wash Project, New York, 1936-38 (teaching), 1938-41 ington L niversity, St. Louis; Whitney Museum of (easel project). One-man shows: Art of This Cen American Art. Lives in New York; teaches at tury, 1944; Kootz Gallery, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1950, Brooklyn Museum Art School, New York Univer n I collections of Addison Gallery of sity, and People's Art Center of the Museum of American Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Modern Art. Museum of Art; Fogg Art Museum; Los Angeles

14 BAZIOTES JACKSON POLLOCK

The variations within this group of paintings are another assertion of the unity of concept that under lies the work of Jackson Pollock. Through the ab stract work previous to 1951 and through the recent more recognizable images there flows the same uni fying spirit that fuses together the work of any major painter —the singleness and depth of Pollock's vision makes unimportant such current antitheses as "figurative" and "nonrepresentational." The attention focused on his immediate qualities —the unconventional materials and method of working, the scale and immediate splendor of much of his work —has left largely untouched the forces that compel him to work in the manner that he does. Why the tension and complexity of line, the violently interwoven movement so closely knit as almost to induce the static quality of perpetual mo tion, the careful preservation of the picture's surface plane linked with an intricately rich interplay upon the canvas, the rupture with traditional composi tional devices that produces, momentarily, the sense that the picture could be continued indefinite ly in any direction? His painting confronts us with a visual concept organically evolved from a belief in the unity that underlies the phenomena among which we live. Void and solid, human action and inertia, are meta morphosed and refined into the energy that sus tains them and is their common denominator. An ocean's tides and a personal nightmare, the burst ing of a bubble and the communal clamor for a vic tim are as inextricably meshed in the coruscation and darkness of his work as they are in actuality. His forms and textures germinate, climax and decline, coalesce and dissolve across the canvas. The picture surface, with no depth of recognizable space or sequence of known time, gives us the never end ing present. We are presented with a visualization of that remorseless consolation —in the end is the beginning. New visions demand new techniques: Pollock's use of unexpected materials and scales is the direct result of his concepts and of the organic intensity Jackson Pollock: Number 3. 195 1. Oil on canvas, 56 x 24". with which he works, an intensity that involves, in Betty Parsons Gallery

15 its complete identification of the artist with his work, a denial of the accident. The most recent paintings are done with an aus terity of means that underlines their protean char acter: thin paint and raw canvas are the vehicles for images full of the compulsion of dreams and the orderliness of myth. Black and white are sleep and waking. Forms and images dissolve and re-form into new organisms; like Proteus they must be caught unawares, asleep. They demand of the view er an alertness and a total involvement before re leasing any answer to the questions posed. Without the intricacy of color and surface pattern character istic of his less immediately figurative work, they are filled with the same combination of strength, sensitivity, and exultant acceptance. Remote from anecdote or propaganda, stripped of immediate material appeal, they both reawaken in us the sense of personal struggle and its collective roots and re call to us the too easily forgotten fact that "what is without is within." ALFONSO OSSORIO

Born Cody, Wyoming, 1912. Grew up in Arizona and northern California. To New York about 1929. Studied at Art Students League with Thomas Ben ton for two years. Worked on WPA Federal Art Project, New York, about 1938-42. Made several trips West. One-man shows: Art of This Century, 1943-47, yearly; Arts Club of Chicago, 1945, I95U San Francisco Museum of Art, 1945; Betty Parsons Gallery, 1948-51, yearly; Venice and Milan, Italy, 1950 (Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century collection); Paris (Michel Tapie), 1952. In collec tions of Addison Gallery of American Art; Balti more Museum of Art; Joslyn Memorial Art Mu seum, Omaha; Museum of Modern Art; San Fran Tniversity cisco Museum of Art; L of Iowa; Yale University; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Lives at Springs, Long Island, New York.

16 POLLOCK

MARK ROTHKO

The progression of a painter's work, as it travels in inevitably, to be understood. time from point to point, will be toward clarity: A picture lives by companionship, expanding and toward the elimination of all obstacles between the quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It painter and the idea, and between the idea and dies by the same token. It is therefore a risky act to the observer. As examples of such obstacles, I give send it out into the world. How often it must be im (among others) memory, history or geometry, paired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty which are swamps of generalization from which one of the impotent who would extend their affliction might pull out parodies of ideas (which are ghosts) universally ! but never an idea in itself. To achieve this clarity is, MARK ROTHKO HKO

Mark Rothko: Number 10. 1950. Oil on canvas, 90^ x 573d?"- Museum of Modern Art, Purchase Fund opposite: Mark Rothko: Number /. 1949. Oil on canvas, 67 x 56". Collection Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III Mark Rothko: Number 18. 1951. Oil on canvas, 81 % x 66%". Betty Parsons Gallery

Born Dvinsk, Russia, 1903. To U.S.A., 1913; spent Neumann's New Art Circle, 1940; Art of This Cen boyhood in Portland, Oregon. Yale University, tury, 1945; Mortimer Brandt Gallery (Betty Parsons' 1921-23. Began to paint, 1926; studied at Art Stu section), 1946; San Francisco Museum of Art, 1946; dents League with Max Weber. Worked on WPA Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1946; Betty Parsons Federal Art Project, New York, about 1936-37. Gallery, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1951- In collections of Taught at California School of Fine Arts, San the Brooklyn Museum: Museum of Modern Art; Francisco, summer 1947, 1949- One-man shows: San Francisco Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of Portland Art Museum, 1933 (watercolors, draw American Art. Teaches at Brooklyn College. Lives ings); Contemporary Arts, New York, 1933; J. B. in New York.

20 ROTHKO CLYFFORD STILL

That pigment on canvas has a way of initiating con tradition on our backs but I cannot hold it a privi ventional reactions for most people needs no re lege to be a pallbearer of my spirit in its name. minder. Behind these reactions is a body of history From the most ancient times the artist has been matured into dogma, authority, tradition. The expected to perpetuate the values of his contempo totalitarian hegemony of this tradition I despise, its raries. The record is mainly one of frustration, sad presumptions I reject. Its security is an illusion, ism, superstition, and the will to power. What great banal, and without courage. Its substance is but ness of life crept into the story came from sources dust and filing cabinets. The homage paid to it is a not yet fully understood, and the temples of art celebration of death. We all bear the burden of this which burden the landscape of nearly every city are

Clyfford Still: Painting. 1949. Oil on canvas, 80 x 68%". Collection Alfonso Ossorio :,*V

above: Clyfford Still: Painting. 1947. Oil on canvas, 69 x 65". Owned by the artist opposite: Clyfford Still: Painting. 1947. Oil on canvas, 84^ x 70". Owned by the artist

a tribute to the attempt to seize this elusive quality Demands for communication are both presump and stamp it out. tuous and irrelevant. The observer usually will see The anxious men find comfort in the confusion of what his fears and hopes and learning teach him to those artists who would walk beside them. The see. But if he can escape these demands that hold up values involved, however, permit no peace, and a mirror to himself, then perhaps some of the impli mutual resentment is deep when it is discovered cations of the work may be felt. But whatever is that salvation cannot be bought. seen or felt it should be remembered that for me We are now committed to an unqualified act, not these paintings had to be something else. It is the illustrating outworn myths or contemporary alibis. price one has to pay for clarity when one's means One must accept total responsibility for what he are honored only as an instrument of seduction or executes. And the measure of his greatness will be assault. in the depth of his insight and his courage in realiz CLYFFORD STILL ing his own vision. From a letter dated February 5, 1952

22 STILL ip- see to up }li- is Born Grandin, North Dakota, 1904. Grew up in Francisco to teach at California School of Fine Arts, me Alberta, Canada, alternating farm work with 1946-50. One-man shows: San Francisco Museum the schooling in Alberta and in Spokane, Washington. of Art, 1941; Art of This Century, 1946; California ins Graduated from Spokane University, 1933. Teach Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1947; Metart Gal or ing fellowship and M.A. degree, Washington State lery, San Francisco, 1950; Betty Parsons Gallery, College, Pullman, where he taught 1933 to 1941. 1947, 1950, 195 1. In collection of San Francisco [LL lo San Francisco, 1941; worked in war plants. In Museum of Art. Lives in New York; teaches at the East 1944; to New York, briefly, 1946; to San Hunter and Brooklyn Colleges.

STILL 23 BRADLEY WALKER TOMLIN

Since art and its enjoyment by the observer are both of his painted surfaces and will see in his complex largely the results of intuition, attempts to explain arrangements of bands, pot-hooks, boomerangs, what artists are trying to do — even when made by letters, dots, rectangles, zigzags and so forth a sort the artists themselves — are seldom satisfactory. Per of pictorial equivalent of ballet, in which the many haps, therefore, the most that should be said of figures shimmy, gyrate, contort or drift at two or Bradley Tomlin's admirable paintings is that they more levels with stimulating spontaneity and with will appeal to those who enjoy sensitively manipu an over-all coordination which is as satisfying as it lated pigment and linear suggestions of movement. is unobtrusive. Such people will respond to the luminous quality EDWARD W. ROOT

above: Bradley Walker Tomlin: Number 9: In Praise of Gertrude Stein. 1950. Oil on canvas, 49" x 8' 6". Collection Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III

left: Bradley Walker Tomlin: Number 10. 1949. Oil on canvas, 27 x 36". Collection Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden plex ngs, sort tany o or .vith as it

OOT

III

Bradley Walker Tomlin: Number 20. 1949. Oil on canvas, 7V x 6'8M". Betty Parsons Gallery

TOMLIN 25 Bradley Walker Tomlin: Number i. 1951. Oil on canvas, 78 x 42". Collection Edward W. Root

Born Syracuse, New York, 1899. Graduated from In collections ol Addison Gallery of American Art; Syracuse L niversity, 1921. Spent several years in Brooklyn Museum; Museum of Cranbrook Acad Europe during 1920s. Taught at Sarah Lawrence emy of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Pennsyl College, Bronxville, New York, 1932-41. One-man vania Academy of the Fine Arts; Phillips Gallery, shows: Montross Gallery, 1924, 1927; Rehn Gal- Washington, D.C.; University of Iowa; Whitney lery, 1931, 1942, 1944; Betty Parsons Gallery, 1950. Museum of American Art. Lives in New York.

26 TOMLIN RICHARD LIPPOLD

above: Richard Lippold: Juggler in the Sun. 1952. Brass, bronze, nickel-chromium, nickel-silver and stainless steel wire, 13" high. Collection Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden. Photograph Adolph Studlv

right: Richard Lippold: Aerial Act. 1950-51. Brass, copper, stainless steel, nickel-chromium and nickel-silver wire, 31 Yl" high. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford. Photograph Adolph Studly Richard Lippold: Five Variations within a Sphere (for John Cage). 1947. Brass, silver, stainless steel and copper wire; 3" to 12" diameter. Collection John Cage. Photograph John Stewart

opposite: Richard Lippold: Variation Number 7: Full Moon. 1949-50. Brass rods, stainless steel and nickel-chromium wire, 10' high. The Museum of Modern Art, Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. Photograph Soichi Sunami

The Iragile snowflake appears in more variations of other materials I can arrange. My preference for form than any kind of "permanent" sculpture. The social action is simply to have my being among all spider's web is both a jewel for the branch and a the other objects that exist in Space, "which loves noose for the fly. Nature abhors a vacuum only us all," and in which modes of communication to within the earth's atmosphere, not beyond it where day can dissolve barriers of time and energy, of infinity "begins." nations and races. Although the word sounds old- With so much variety in truth, where will a man fashioned, I thus have my faith in Space. Like every rest his head and his heart? At this moment in his adventure, this being in Space at all levels is full of tory the answer seems to be, "Nowhere," although terror, delight, question, and answer. Has any Ma we still have our preferences, as there are many terial, Society, or Belief had more permanence or species of turtles and rockets. My preference in finality? material is Space, captured by the most seductive RICHARD LIPPOLD

Born Milwaukee, 1915. Studied at Art Institute of 1945-47; since 1947, head of art department, Tren d Chicago, 1933-37, an University of Chicago. In ton Junior College. One-man shows: Willard dustrial designer, 1937-41. In 1942, gave up design Gallery, 1947, 1948, 1950, 1952; two-man show, ing, began sculpture. To New York, 1944, to live. Margaret Brown Gallery, Boston, 1950. In collec Has taught at Layton School of Art, Milwaukee, tions of Addison Gallery of American Art; Munson- 1940-41; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica; Museum of 1941-44; Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont, Modern Art; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford.

28 LIPPOLD

THOMAS WILFRED

Thomas Wilfred: A passage from the lumia composition. Abstract, Opus jg. 1923

A new art form has begun its life in our generation, execution of nearly every new work means changes a silent visual art in which the sole medium is light. in the existing equipment. Lumia may never be This new art form has been named lumia. played in the manner of music and I see no reason Like the older arts, lumia is an esthetic concept at all for striving toward this goal. The two arts are expressed through tools, materials and techniques. so different in nature that attempts to design lumia The lumia artist visualizes his composition as a instruments in imitation of musical ones will prove drama of moving form and color unfolding in dark as futile as attempts to write lumia compositions by space. In order to share his vision with others he following the conventional rules laid down for must materialize it. This he does by executing it as a music. We must shun imitation and deal with lumia two-dimensional sequence projected on a flat white in terms of itself. screen by means of a specially constructed light- The result alone matters. How we have achieved generating instrument controlled from a keyboard. it is a secondary consideration, whether we have By manipulating the sliding keys, he can release adhered to established procedures in optics, or white light, mold the light into form, add color, and kicked over the traces to do something which may imbue the result with motion and change. well make a physicist scoff but which nevertheless Lumia is neither composed nor performed like yields the desired result. This applies to all phases music. In music instruments have been evolved, of the new art; it is obvious that the rules governing and long since standardized, by means of which any static composition and static color harmony in composition may be played instantly. In lumia the painting do not apply to form and color in motion,

30 nor do the rules of composition in music apply to a visual sequence. If a lumia composition is stopped at any point, an analysis of the static image may show both form and color out of balance from the painter's point of view. It will have meaning only when viewed as a link between what came before it and what is to follow. Harmony and balance are here a kinetic concept; the composition may not contain a single moment of static symmetry, no matter where stopped. A lumia composition may be recorded and mechanically rendered, either full screen size or re duced almost to a miniature, by means of playing devices corresponding to the phonograph in music. The compositions in this exhibition are such recordings. Lumia has been used in various fields; when played from the keyboard, as visual accompaniment to music, the drama and the dance; and in recorded form, as projected mobile mural decoration, as exhibits in museums and private collections, and as an aid in psychiatric diagnosis and psychotherapy.

THOMAS WILFRED

Born Nestved, Denmark, 1889. Made first experi ments with light, Copenhagen, 1905, with a cigar box, an incandescent lamp and pieces of colored glass. Continued experiments while studying art and music, Copenhagen, Paris, London, 1905-11. Professional singer and player of twelve-stringed archlute, 1912-19, to support experiments with light as an independent art medium. Served in Danish army, 1914-16. To U.S.A., 1916; continued concert work until 1919, then gave full time to building an instrument, the "clavilux," completed late in 1921. First public "lumia" performance with the clavilux, January 1922, at Neighborhood Play house, New York. Clavilux recital tours, 1922-43, United States, Canada, Europe (first European tour, 1925). Soloist with Philadelphia Orchestra under Stokowski, 1926, performing visual setting

Thomas Wilfred: A sequence, eight seconds long, from the lumia composition Unfolding, Opus 12J, 194° Joseph Glasco: Big Sitting Cat. 1949. Ink, 40 x 263^8". Museum of Modern Art, Katharine Cornell Fund above: Joseph Glasco: Two Figures. 1951. Oil and sand on canvas, 30J4 x 40". The Museum of Modern Art, Purchase Fund right: Joseph Glasco: Athlete and Landscape. 1951. Oil on canvas, 30 x 24". Collection Mr. and Mrs. Lee A. Ault

Born Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, 1925. Lived in Texas from age of six. At LIniversity of Texas six months; drafted, 1943. Painted murals for Air Corps at Amarillo Air Field. Transferred to in fantry, early 1945; saw combat in Germany. After release from Army, traveled in Europe. In Los Angeles, 1946-48; studied briefly at Art Center School and with Rico Lebrun. To Mexico, 1948. To New York, 1949, to live; studied at Art Students League, 1949. One-man shows: Perls Gallery, 1950; Catherine Viviano Gallery, 1951, 1952. In collec tions of Museum of Modern Art ; Whitney Museum of American Art.

GLASCO 35 IRVING KRIESBERG

Technically my paintings are depictions with a ment a real person might wear. Together the artist fluid focal point. The objects in them are shown not and the observer altered the meaning of the colored as taken from a fixed point in space nor at a single panel: from being a symbolic object it became also instant of time. Traditionally we expect a picture to a depiction of natural objects. The optical means show a scene taken at a given point in space and employed were arbitrary conventions but they gave time. How can a single fixed depiction impart to painting an unsurpassed richness and scope. We many points of view and many moments of time? are still within this tradition. We admire medieval Well, how can a depiction on a flat surface impart a art and borrow from it, but we still seek to depict sense of depth and space? It can, it does. We daily natural objects with all the richness and vitality we see such pictures: we look at a flat piece of paper, perceive in them. If a flat surface can show the we see a spacious vista, and we sense nothing illogi depth and space of nature then a single fixed sur cal. The idea is contradictory, but it works. It works face can show the change and motion of nature. I because we want it to. see that nature is motion and change and that is The medieval man saw his icon simply as it was. what I paint. True, it is illogical, but then art is Of course it symbolized something else, but his illogical. How can patches of color transmit to one Madonna had little optical reference to a specific man the passions felt by another? It is impossible. woman. The Renaissance man saw his Madonna as It is utterly marvelous. a woman: what the artist painted blue was not only IRVING KRIESBERG a symbol, it was the depiction of a robe, a real gar From a letter dated February 9. 1952

opposite: Irving Kriesberg: Yellow Sheep. 195 1. Tempera, 55^ x 47JI5". Collection Bernard (. Reis

lejt: Irving Kriesberg: Birds Alighting. 195 1. Tempera, 32% x 30". Curt Valentin Gallery

36 Born Chicago, 1919. Studied at Art Institute of fair. To New York, 1945, to live. In group shows: Chicago, 1937-40. Painted murals for College of Art Institute of Chicago and Cincinnati Art Mu Jewish Studies, Chicago, 1938. To Mexico, 194 1, seum, 194C Pepsi-Cola show, 1948; Pennsylvania for three years; studied at Government School of Academy of the Fine Arts, 1949. Two-man show, Painting and Sculpture (Callejon Esmeralda), Mex Art Institute of Chicago, 1946; one of three in "New ico City; murals for exposition building, Ministry Talent'' exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, 1951. of Agriculture, Mexico City, for 1943 agricultural In collection of Museum of Modern Art.

KRIESBERG 37 HERBERT KATZMAN

above: Herbert Katzman: Horse Butcher. 1949. Oil on canvas, 61 3^ x 2iJ4"- Downtown Gallery

left: Herbert Katzman: Giotto's Tower. 1949. Oil on canvas, 45H x 283^"- Collection Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dreyfuss

opposite: Herbert Katzman: Brooklyn Bridge. 1951-52. Oil on canvas, 54 x 60". Private collection, New York

38 I paint things around me that I like and if at times the subject itself means very much to me. I like the the paintings move it's because I am moved by the way the yellow-black sky looks over the Brooklyn world around me— in that sense I suppose I am an Bridge, the way the sun hits a building, or the way expressionist painter. I do not paint abstractly be my wife looks in an ochre-green dress. These are the cause if I give up the appearance of the world I find important things to me and they are wonderful to I am unable to become involved in it. I am not in paint. terested in its abstract or metaphysical aspects as HERBERT KATZMAN

Born Chicago, 1923. Studied at Art Institute of ship, 1946. To Paris, 1947, for three and a half Chicago, 1935 (children's classes) and 1940-42. In years; traveled in Belgium, Holland, Germany, U.S. Navy, 1942-44. Returned to Art Institute, Czechoslovakia. Returned to U.S.A., 1950. Lives in 1944; graduated and was awarded traveling fellow- New City, New York.

KATZMAN 39 HERMAN ROSE

I am a New Yorker born and bred. Like so many as important symbols of man's doings. There the other tenement-raised children, I early learned to Edison Tower with its clock and distinctive silhou escape to the roof top for closeness with the ele ette has climactic power and looms meaningfully ments, privacy for contemplation, while yet in sight over Union Square and Irving Place. and smell of the peopled tenements. Long ago I dis I always paint specific scenes or people or situa covered the city roof tops as a quiet place where one tions. For me it is not possible to recreate human can do serious work without being disturbed. emotions and perceptions without the physical I have lived and painted alternately in Manhat shapes of the world that gave these feelings birth. tan and Brooklyn. I once found Manhattan grim The student of art takes root in tradition. and cold. More recently I am developing a sense of Through tradition we gain a key to art, a definition, its peculiar color, a fondness for its bold roofs and a standard. Tradition takes the place of nature and spires. Brooklyn is the friendly spot where you can first-hand experience for the young artist. Once portray your neighbor's house or his garden. secure and growing, he gains insight into how life Three pictures were done from a roof over near influences art forms and expression, learns to cast Avenue A and 15th Street. I had wandered up and his own experiences onto canvas, learns how in turn down mountains of tenement stairs, hastily and mis the valid and inspiring art of others influences his trustfully expelled from some as an intruder, un very life. noticed in others. On occasion a friendly superin My sincerest desire is to paint the era I live in, tendent or tenant expressed respectful curiosity and twentieth-century reality. If only I can put on can offered cooperation. Here I was fortunately let vas man as he is today, seen through me a product alone with a wonderful vista all around me. I could of today, in genuine personal terms, thereby to be see the whole East 14th Street area of Manhattan. myself. Seen thus from on high the tanks and towers rise up HERMAN ROSE

Herman Rose: Red House. 1948. Oil on canvas, 12 x 13%". Collection Alexander M. Bing

40 Herman Rose: East New York. 1947. Oil on canvas, 13 x 22". Collection A. I. Klotz.

Born Brooklyn, New York, 1909. At seventeen York Public Library's print room. First exhibited entered National Academy of Design, studying in 1944. One-man shows, Egan Gallery, 1946, 1947, there two to three years. Intensive study of paint 1948. In collection of Museum of Modern Art. ings in New York museums and of prints in New Lives in Brooklyn.

Herman Rose: From Avenue A. 1946. Oil on canvas, 12 x Collection Dr. and Mrs. Alexander Wolf EDWIN DICKINSON

Born Seneca Falls, New York, 1891. Studied at rial Gallery, Rochester, 1940; Passedoit Gallery, Pratt Institute, Art Students League, and with 193^j yearly 1938-42; Farnsworth Museum, Welles- William M. Chase and Charles W. Hawthorne. ley College, 194 1. In collections of Albright Art Began exhibiting, 1916. Served in U. S. Navy, Gallery; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Springfield 1917-19. Traveled in Italy and Spain; painted in Museum of Fine Arts. Teaches at Art Students France, 1919-20, 1937-38. Worked on U.S. Public League and Brooklyn Museum Art School. Lives Works of Art Project, 1934. One-man shows: in New York and Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, 1927; Wood Memo

above: Edwin Dickinson: Self Portrait. 194 1. Oil on canvas, 20 x 23". Collection Mr. and Mrs. Earle Ludgin

left: Edwin Dickinson: The Finger Lakes. 1940. Oil on canvas, 23L2 x 28%". Collection Mrs. Chauncey L. Waddell

E: Edwin Dickinson: Woodland Scene. 1933-35. Oil on canvas, 71% x 683^". Collection Ansley W. Sawyer

DICKINSON 43 44 DICKINSON CATALOG OF THE EXHIBITION

LENDERS Dragon. 1950. Oil on canvas, 48 x 40". Lent by the Metro politan Museum of Art Mr. and Mrs. Lee A. Ault, New Canaan, Connecticut; Alexander M. Bing, New York; Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. *Toy World. 1951. Oil on canvas, 50 x 60". Lent by Mr. and Burden, Washington, D. C.; John Butler, New York; John Mrs. William A. M. Burden. III. p. 13 Cage, New York; Mrs. Elizabeth Campbell Crain, New *Jungle. 195 1. Oil on canvas, 48 x 60". Lent by Nelson A. York; Edwin Dickinson, New York; Mr. and Mrs. Henry Rockefeller. III. p. 14 Dreyfuss, Pasadena; Joseph H. Hirshhorn, Portchester, New York; Philip C. Johnson, New Canaan, Connecticut; A. I. EDWARD CORBETT Klotz, New Rochelle, New York; Mrs. Samuel M. Kootz, New York; Mr. and Mrs. Earle Ludgin, Hubbard Woods, Painting. 195 x. Oil on canvas, 67^ x 48 G" Illinois; Alfonso Ossorio, New York; Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Number /. 195 1. Chalk and carbon pencil, g2jjj x 18L2" Palca, New York; Bernard J. Reis, New York; Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III, New York; Nelson A. Rockefeller, New Number 2. 195 1. Chalk, ink and carbon pencil, 16 3J x 13 G * York; Edward W. Root, Clinton, New York; Ansley W. Number 3. 1951. Chalk, pencil and casein, 21 x 13%" Sawyer, Buffalo; Joseph R. Shapiro, Oak Park, Illinois; Joseph F. Smith, Summit, New Jersey; Clyfford Still, New Number g. 1951. Chalk, 33 x 22 ]/%" York; Mrs. Eleanor W. Ultmann, New York; Mrs. Number 10. 1951. Chalk and casein, 34 % x 22%' Chauncey L. Waddell, Riverdale, New York; Thomas 1/?," *Number //. 195 1. Chalk, 34^8 x 22 III. p. 7 Wilfred, West Nyack, New York; Dr. and Mrs. Alexander Wolf, New York. Number 12. 195 1. Chalk, 22% x 18" *Number 13. 1951. Chalk and casein, 27 x 14". III. p. 6 A.C.A. Gallery, New York; Downtown Gallery, New York; Number 16. 1951. Chalk, 23 x 14 Galeria Escondida, Taos, New Mexico; Kootz Gallery, New York; Betty Parsons Gallery, New York; Curt Valentin Number 18. 1952. Chalk, 23^ x 18JJ" Gallery, New York; Catherine Viviano Gallery, New York; All works by Corbett lent by La Galeria Escondida Willard Gallery, New York. EDWIN DICKINSON Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; Congrega * Woodland Scene. 1933-35. Oil on canvas, 71 % x 68}4"- Lent tion B'nai Israel, Millburn, New Jersey; The Metropolitan by Ansley W. Sawyer. III. p. 43 Museum of Art, New York; Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts. Composition with Still Life. 1933-37. Oil on canvas, 97 x 77%". Lent by the artist CATALOG Stranded Brig. 1934. Oil on canvas, 40 x 50". Lent by the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massa chusetts (acquired through Public Works of Art Project, A star preceding the title indicates that the work is illustrated. In dimensions height precedes width. 1934) Chateau at Ollioides. 1938. Oil on canvas, 28% x 363-8". Lent WILLIAM BAZIOTES by Ansley W. Sawyer

Dwarf. 1947. Oil on canvas, 42 x 36^". The Museum of Villa Le Printemps. 1938. Oil on canvas, 23% x 28%". Lent Modern Art, A. Conger Goodyear Fund by the artist *Night Mirror. 1947. Oil on canvas, 48 x 60". Lent by Mrs. Villa La Mouette. 1938. Oil on canvas, 23^ x 28%". Lent by John D. Rockefeller III. III. p. 12 the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Moon Forms. 1947. Oil on canvas, 36 x 48". Lent by Mrs. *The Finger Lakes. 1940. Oil on canvas, 23^ x 28%". Lent Samuel M. Kootz by Mrs. Chauncey L. Waddell. III. p. 42 Mummy. 1950. Oil on canvas, 36 x 42". Lent by Edward W. *Self Portrait. 1941 . Oil on canvas, 20 x 23". Lent by Mr. and Root Mrs. Earle Ludgin. III. p. 42 *Cat. 1950. Oil on canvas, 38^ x 22". Lent by Joseph R. "Unfinished composition. Begun 1943 — still in progress. Oil Shapiro. III. p. 13 on canvas, 48 x 60". Lent by the artist. III. p. 44

45 This book has been printed in March, 1952, for the Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art by the Plantin Press, New York

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